The application aims to provide a more personal social networking experience – as Path put it, “No following, no friending…just sharing with the people who matter most.”

The official launch was announced on the Path blog yesterday. It explained the service as follows;

“Path is the personal network. A place to be yourself and share life with close friends and family. The personal network doesn’t replace your existing social networks – it augments them. Path allows you to capture your life’s most personal moments and share them with the 50 close friends and family in your life who matter most.

Because your personal network is limited to your 50 closest friends and family, you can always trust that you can post any moment, no matter how personal. Path is a place where you can be yourself.”

Unlike Twitter & Facebook, Path users are limited to just 50 friends. It chose the 50 based on theories of Robin Dunbar, Oxford Professor of Evolutionary Psychology, who claims that 150 is the maximum number of social relationships any human can handle.

Path has attracted a lot of attention, mainly because of the team who founded it; former Facebook senior platform manager Dave Morin, Macster co-creator Dustin Mierau and Napster co-founder Shawn Fanning.

With such a prolific line-up of developers, Path will no doubt attract a lot of interest, but whether initial interest will convert in to regular usage is yet to be seen.